The History Of History Part 3

The groups' eyebrows were raised. No one replied.

"An important man as well." Margaret went on. "Goebbels's diaries indicate without any doubt that Magda continued to sleep with her revered Jewish lover long after she started with Goebbels. Goebbels, the wag, adored her wild ways, her perversity; he wrote"-and here Margaret made a show of speaking in a buffoonish, n.a.z.i-style German-"'Magda ist von bestrickender Wildheit. Sie liebt, wie nur eine grosse Frau lieben kann,' which means, friends, in English, 'Magda is of a mesmerizing wildness! She loves as only a great woman can love!'

"Goebbels was insecure, jealous, romantic, and cruel. Insecurity-driven romantic jealousy will make you sick, maybe some of you know this," Margaret looked at the crowd before her. "It made him sick anyway, and he lamented, justifying his cruelty to all his other little tarts. What a fool he was!" Margaret crowed. She could feel herself getting carried away. Her heart was beating, and she could barely decide what to tell them, there was so much that occurred to her. "He was obsessed with the power of his 'eros,' as he called it, and his imperative to conquer and master the love force within him! He was grandiose, self-aggrandizing. Strangle and conquer your love, he always said-and what an agony when he couldn't! He champed at the women who stayed distant, those in particular. The early, great love of his life, whom he l.u.s.ted after, limping, following her from university to university, and by whom he was ultimately jilted, was also a Jewish intellectual, like Magda's Arlosoroff." Margaret's mouth was full of water at the thought, as if it were a sweet and pungent apple fermenting against her tongue. "Can you believe it?" she asked. Her audience said nothing, but appeared to follow her gossip carefully. It was especially well-tolerated by a short, apparently wealthy Brazilian businessman. His tall and beautiful wife, however, seemed to be coming undone from boredom, as were their two teenage daughters, who wore makeup so heavy it appeared intended for the stage.

Margaret gave a great laugh. She was trying to drive up interest. "What a fanatic Magda was! What a waste of herself, always donating herself to some cause-"

But at that moment Margaret happened to glance backward at the building behind her. She caught a glimpse of movement there.

"Magda, Magda," she went on desperately, looking back at the group, trying hard to ignore the sensation of movement. "Magda was constant only in her fanaticism toward one cause or another. She married Goebbels in the end, telling her friend Leni Riefenstahl that her love for Hitler was much stronger than her love for the propaganda minister. Goebbels had a-what's it called?" Margaret asked. She was distracted. The feeling continued. Something or someone was moving behind her. "What's it called?" She was fl.u.s.tered; the hair on the back of her neck stood up. "You know, when one leg's shorter than the other, and twisted?"

"A peg leg?" an American woman suggested.

"No, no." Margaret was getting out of breath. "That's not it." She left off. "Anyway, he was, well, handicapped, and Magda told Leni that she was marrying Joseph even though she didn't love him, in hopes of a closer union with her Fuhrer-whom she wanted very much to marry, but whom she couldn't have! Couldn't have, you see, because Hitler's great love was for his dead niece, you know, little what's-her-name who shot herself in Hitler's rooms down in Munich back in '31, apparently a suicide in response to Hitler's withdrawn love. Magda adopted the feminine duties of state within the Third Reich, however, always to be found at Hitler's side on grand occasions, and yes, giving birth, too. What a tool, what a weapon it was! But why, does anyone have a guess, why was it all her babies turned out to be girls, all but one, and the little boy that did come was slow slow in the head? The award, you see, the state decoration, the in the head? The award, you see, the state decoration, the Mutterkreuz Mutterkreuz, the Mother Cross, something like the Iron Cross, that Hitler and Goebbels, her own husband, thought up; its highest grade went to those women who had eight children, so she was continually pregnant through those years, giving birth to her six H H-named children, Hitler's loving hetaera-ha-ha!" Margaret laughed. "It was little Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Holde, Hedda, and Heide.

Margaret turned her head upward then-upward and to the side in a faux-contemplative gesture. Stealing the moment, she twisted back to see finally what it was that was moving behind her. She couldn't quite make it out. She wanted badly to turn around all the way, but the sound of her own voice dragged her on. "This building, the onetime Ministry of People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, is today the Ministry of Health for the Federal Republic of Germany."

Still breathing with the performer's excitement, she gave in to her impulse and turned around all the way. She saw-more than the cancer, more than the lump of living construction-she saw a woman, moving at one of the second-floor windows of the ministry. The woman drew back gauzy curtains, her face electrically familiar, s.h.i.+ning sharply in the illumination of Margaret's upturned gaze. The smooth, blond, wig-like hair, carefully set in marcel waves, glistened over a beaked face, her prominent brow bone so low that her little black, unblinking eyes were in heavy shadow. The hair on her tiny skull, with its cultivation, and the beautifully tailored dress-black gabardine, high-waisted-almost managed to obscure the woman's body; the woman was hunchbacked, but uniquely, peculiarly-inhumanly. The woman leaned out the window. There was a sense of dirty feathers, of sickening, phosph.o.r.escent droppings, a strong suggestion of violence, as if at any minute she might coast down from her window perch and fall on Margaret with the talons of an all-knowing, all-destroying intelligence. She smiled at Margaret with such a tight, familiar grin. Margaret drew back. The woman smiled again and nodded her head.

Margaret turned around toward the group, but her eyes dragged along the ground, and among her tourists there was an uncomfortable silence. They regarded her expectantly. Margaret stuttered, making sounds as if she would begin to speak, but her mouth was dry. It was the Floridian who saved her.

"Who was the architect of this building? I guess you haven't told us the most basic information."

"Oh," Margaret said quickly, pulling her eyes up, "an excellent question. The building may indeed appear to be in the archetypical n.a.z.i style, so-called n.a.z.i Monumentalism, which, in turn, would seem to imply the signature of none other than the famed technocrat himself, Albert Speer. But in fact this building is the work of Karl Reichle, an architect whose name is no longer remembered. Reichle's architectural innovation was the subterranean garage with overhead lighting." Margaret smiled, her head c.o.c.ked. "The first of the modern kind."

She glanced behind her again. Now the woman in gabardine was no longer in the window. Margaret smiled more brightly still.

Too soon. There was someone coming out the side entrance of the building near them, in sunny waved hair and heavy grey feathers, and a face Margaret now recognized without any doubt. In one hand this person carried a leather cosmetics case, in the other, an ax. She nodded at Margaret meaningfully.

Just a few meters away, the hawk-woman walked up to the flesh of the propaganda ministry, and putting the case down on the ground beside her, she raised the ax over her head and made a broad downward arc. She chopped. With its soft flesh, the building facade gave way instantly, the skin rolling back from the muscle beneath it like seawater contracting from the sh.o.r.e. Floods of blood gushed into the street. Some of the group was spattered with it. Tufts of muscle, ripped by the dull blade, budded into the perpendicular.

Margaret felt as if she'd been hit. Her mouth pulled into a closed-lipped, cheerful yet cheerless grin, and she could feel her eyes losing focus. She wheeled about and looked at the group of tourists. They looked back at her, the undazed souls, some chatting quietly, others taking snapshots. Margaret gazed at their blood-daubed traveling clothes. The man from Florida who had asked the question about the building's architect even seemed satisfied. His arms were folded across his chest and his legs cast wide. Margaret rubbed her brow. She blushed. In her stomach, an ache spread quickly through her middle.

She led the group away. From a safe distance, her heart still speeding like a rabbit's, Margaret turned back and caught a last glimpse of the sensational wound on the side of the building. The hawk-woman, for her part, was gone. A quarried gouge of missing flesh was apparent, and the streets ran with blood as though water up from the sewers.

Margaret steered the group southward at a clip. They went to the looming air ministry of Hermann Goring-the elephant to the mice-like buildings around it. In its fleshly state, it exuded the stink of obesity: sweat trapped in fold upon fold. Margaret hurried by without stopping; the customers followed. Later they went by the sites of the SS and the Gestapo. These rea.s.sured, as no human dwellings were left to remember or incarnate. The trace remains of the foundations of the buildings appeared to Margaret not of flesh but of bone, and discoursing on them was easier.

They neared the Anhalter Bahnhof to look at the ruins of the once-palatial train station, and on this longer walk, Margaret had time to reflect. She saw that she could not possibly go on giving the tour. She was wrapped in a nightmare. The hawk-woman and the strange smell had made of Berlin a changeling desert, and in this desert she was ailed by the inverse of claustrophobia; she was trapped in a s.p.a.ce so large, so endless, so ever-broadening, that it was without nook or shelter; she was trapped in a cloudless sky.

But she still had an hour to fill.

It occurred to her that if the buildings' transformation had something to do with her own mind, perhaps she could outmaneuver this mind. Couldn't she escape the hallucinations if she left the path of the scripted tour? She reasoned she might easily go somewhere she had never been, thus to a place upon which she would be incapable of overlaying imaginative visions. In fact, breathlessly, she realized that not far away was just such a place. A 1937 post office stood empty and abandoned on Mockernstra.s.se, and she had read about it often-she could easily improvise a tour-like commentary.

Margaret hummed to herself to keep her mind at rest. She led the tourists a bit farther down wide Stresemannstra.s.se than she had ever been before, and turned into Mockernstra.s.se. One side of this street was empty. Bombs had knocked out all the old buildings, one winter day.

In the distance, Margaret caught sight of the abandoned post office; the L-shaped building reared up on the corner. The building was bony, shuttered and prehistoric, as if the street were the hall of a forgotten and half-empty museum, and the building was the skeleton of a Pleistocene beast in a shadowed corner, dusty and ma.s.sive. Its facade was punched out in looming vertical lines-ribs of ma.s.sive bones.

No, Margaret saw, leaving the route of the tour, she had not escaped. This building too was a carca.s.s; the smell was enough to throw you down-a ma.s.s of bone drawn over with flesh decaying; blackened and bruised, rigid and retracted, a mutilated corpse.

The main entrance on the corner loomed. The opaque gla.s.s doors were shattered and covered in graffiti. Looking closely, Margaret could see a tattoo in the rotted flesh-a globe traversed by a banner emblazoned with the word Post Post-that had been partially eaten away. She turned her back to the building and faced the group. "This was once a post office," she began unevenly.

The group drew up around. They seemed to sense her uncertainty. Margaret went on in a more bra.s.sy tone. "The entire district of Northern Kreuzberg was flattened in a single daytime raid on February 3, 1945. The raid was meant to decommission the train station. It also killed three thousand people. Almost everything was destroyed; only one building in fifteen survived. This building had the most miraculous of escapes: it wasn't hit, but the land in the crook of its L-shape was. If you look through the window here, clear through to the other side of the building, you'll see a bomb crater filled with water; it's as big as a lake." The tourists craned and peeked, but the windows were opaque as though the smoke of a long-ago fire had left them murky, and there were mutters of dissatisfaction. Margaret beckoned, and they followed her down the road to the far end of one of the arms of the L. On the opposite side of the street there was a mess of heavy trees on the bombed-out land, with a jungle depth to its green-the crush of foliage cast a shadow like a stain.

Here, on this side, beyond the end of the post office, wasteland stretched farther, part.i.tioned off with falling-down sections of barbed-wire fencing. The Queen Anne's lace sprouted unhindered; nothing had happened here for years. Through the metal grill, the back of the building could be seen. It was an unadorned pink lump of rotting flesh.

And just as Margaret had promised, a bomb crater filled with water, a great pond, sat in the crook of the L, like a welt of saliva before receding gums.

"What does this building have to do with n.a.z.is?" It was the man from Florida.

Margaret grabbed the wire lattice of the fence with both hands, peering through to the back entrance of the building. The door of the back entrance to the post office was missing. The empty hole was alluring to Margaret, like the entrance to a cave: a windy, unprotected void, unbelievably dark. Why did it appear as if wind were blowing from it? A memory came to Margaret of a cave she had once visited in South Dakota as a girl. In that place, there is a vast underground cave, with many miles of subterranean tunnels, but on the surface of the earth, almost no trace: only one tiny hole, no bigger than a rabbit's burrow. Margaret stared at the dark entrance to the building, where the weeds outside were bobbing, laden with air, bowing and swaying in the artificial wind. Margaret was quiet.

"What does this have to do with anything?"

That was the Floridian again.

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt of this post office was the central bureau of the Berliner pneumatic dispatch," Margaret said. "Before the war, there was a total of three thousand kilometers of vacuum tunnels connecting every post office in Berlin. A dispatch could be sent through the vacuum tubes from Ruhleben in the south to Hiddensee in the north in twelve minutes."

"Does it still work?"

Margaret made a descending whistle: a bomb falling. "Almost everything was destroyed," she said. "But the bureau was connected by a tunnel to the New Reich Chancellery and the Fuhrer's bunker. If Hitler had made an escape at the end of the war instead of killing himself, as some people believe he did, then he would have come here, to the bas.e.m.e.nt of this post office."

The tourists nodded, and Margaret turned away sharply. She began to lead the group back toward Potsdamer Platz.

She did not turn around and speak to them the entire way. When they got to the S-Bahn station, she told them simply the tour was over. Some of them muttered within earshot that it had been a disappointment of a tour. No one tipped her.

Later that same day, Margaret went back to Schwabische Stra.s.se. She went into the courtyard. When she got to the little door in the back leading up to the doctor's office, there was a note pinned to it. "The practice of Dr. Gudrun Arabscheilis will be closed for the holiday, from 11-11-04 to 11-20-04."

Today was only the eleventh. And then Margaret thought of something else. There was no holiday to speak of. She ripped the note off the door. And now that she considered, what sort of practice could the old woman possibly have, blind as she was?

SIX * * Magda's Face Magda's Face

The next day it rained. Margaret did not set foot outside. Several times, however, she went to her window and looked down the Grunewaldstra.s.se, and each time there were the buildings, softly puckered, pink and tan and breathing under the raindrops. She threw open the window as the sun went down; she looked for the cool shadow. The chill, wet, autumn air blew into the apartment. Winter was coming. Some of the younger buildings had become pinker with edges chapped; older buildings-that was the majority-looked red in harsher tones, as if they were bursting into flame. The vague, soft scent of flesh, stronger than the smell of coal dust, had already become easily recognizable.

Yesterday was repeating in a flas.h.i.+ng loop in her mind. It was drawing her into a repet.i.tive circle. Instead of swaddling her memory in sleep and slipping it away as was her custom, Margaret was sifting through the day before with both hands.

The hawk-woman with the ax. Margaret knew very well who the woman was. It was Magda Goebbels. Magda Goebbels-Joseph's wife.

That evening, she began to read a biography of Magda Goebbels. She had read this particular biography once before, but she was reading it now with new eyes.

And it was that evening as well that she had the first of what she would later call an episode episode.

It began about thirty pages into the book. She had a sensation as if a bright light had been switched on, or as though she were drunk on red wine and a searchlight were coming in through the window. And whereas she usually read with systematic attention, tonight her interest was untamed and frantic, full of desire, like the need to scratch an itch that has already been scratched to blood. She was making some unsteady attempts at note-taking as she read, but again and again she stood up from her chair, went out of the room, brought herself back, and just as soon was ready to run out of the room again. There came a horrible pleasure, a pleasure that was laced with a kind of shame-her heart was overflowing. Even her handwriting changed: it was crabbed, controlled only by its extreme miniaturization and intense pressure of the pen. She came to a description of Magda Goebbels's corpse when the Russians found it after her suicide, and the thing struck her so-she felt the need to copy the entire pa.s.sage into her notebook. Each time she tried, however, the gremlin of her gaze went wild: she mangled sentences, unable to concentrate for the time it took to move her eyes from book to notebook. But still she would not, indeed could not, leave off and let well enough alone, and so five times-each time more desperately than the time before-she began to copy the following.

Berlin, May 3, 1945On May 2, 1945, in the center of Berlin, on the premises of the bunker of the German Reich Chancellery, several meters from the entry door to said bunker, Lieutenant Colonel Klimenko and the Majors Bystrov and Chasin (in the presence of Berlin residents-the German Lange, Wilhelm, cook of the Reich Chancellery, and Schneider, Karl, garage superintendent of the Reich Chancellery) at 17:00 hours found the charred bodies of a man and woman; the body of the man was of short stature, the foot of the right leg was in a half-twisted position (club-foot) in a charred metal prosthesis; on it lay the remains of a burnt party uniform of the NSDAP and a singed party badge; near the burnt body of the woman was discovered a singed golden cigarette etui, on the body a golden party badge of the NSDAP and a singed golden broach. Near the heads of the two bodies lay two Walther pistols Nr. 1 (damaged by fire).On the third of May 1945 Platoon Leader of the Russian Defense Department SMERSH of the 207th Protection Division, Lieutenant Colonel Iljin, found in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in a separate room on several beds the corpses of children (five girls and a boy) from the ages of three to fourteen. They were dressed in light nightgowns and showed signs of poisoning.

As she finished the copying, Margaret grabbed her head in her hand.

Achtung! (Margaret wrote to herself in the notebook.) (Margaret wrote to herself in the notebook.)Regarding the children:Their ages, at the time of their deaths, were between four and twelve, not three and fourteen as the Soviets say here.They were taken by SMERSH to the prison of Plotzensee, where the bodies were viewed by more Germans, for the sake of identification. And by more Russians, for the sake of the press, and the lurid sight of the enemy's surrender of even its children.Regarding the photographs: Margaret held the pictures up to the light and considered whether or not she could sketch what she saw on the page, but she felt nauseous.

Instead, she wrote, The children look fresh in death. They can be seen in the photographs-mortuary pictures from Plotzensee-still in the clean, white cotton nightgowns they wore to bed, blond hair still in braids, color in their cheeks, the apotheosis of everything the National Socialists meant by the word Heimat. Heimat. Their heads are turned toward the camera, each in turn, held erect by a young Russian coroner in a butcher's ap.r.o.n, round tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, and long, black rubber gloves Their heads are turned toward the camera, each in turn, held erect by a young Russian coroner in a butcher's ap.r.o.n, round tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, and long, black rubber gloves.

A few moments later, Margaret was still on red alert. She recalled that once, she had read a letter Magda Goebbels wrote with her own hand. It was reproduced in its entirety in a book that she knew was very likely still somewhere in the flat. It quickly became s.h.i.+ning and irresistible. She went to the shelf and began to page through several books. She couldn't remember exactly where she had read it, that was the trouble. She went into the hall and knocked over two piles of books and rummaged.

The pa.s.sage was nowhere to be found.

Back at the desk, she grabbed her forehead in her hand again. Her mind pulsed. All at once, like a word on the tip of the tongue bubbling up after sleep, she knew after all which book it was. She plunged her hand to the shelf and withdrew a dust-covered book: The Death of Adolf Hitler The Death of Adolf Hitler. She paged through it, and there indeed was the facsimile.

She could feel hives blooming on her neck. She was so excited-it was as if someone else's body were moving under her head. Her heart beat, and it was hardly her own heart.

My beloved son! Now we have been here in the Fuhrerbunker for six days-Papa, your six little siblings, and I-in order to give our National Socialist lives the only possible honorable finish. Whether you will receive this letter I don't know...You must know that against his wishes I have stayed by Papa's side, that even last Sunday the Fuhrer wanted to help me to get out of here. You know your mother-we have the same blood, for me there was no question of it. Our heavenly idea is going to pieces-and with it everything beautiful, awe-inspiring, n.o.ble, and good that I have known in my life. The world that will come after the Fuhrer and National Socialism is no longer worth living in, and therefore I have brought the children here with me. They are too good for the life that will come after us, and the merciful Lord will understand me when I give them salvation myself. You will live on, and I have one request of you: Don't forget that you're a German, never do anything that is against your honor, and take care that through your life our death was not in vain.The children are wonderful. Without any a.s.sistance they help each other in these more than primitive conditions. Whether they sleep on the floor, whether or not they can wash, whether they have something to eat or not, never a word of complaint or tears. The bombardments shake the bunker. The older ones protect the younger ones, and their presence here is already a blessing in that every now and then they manage to bring a smile to the Fuhrer.Be true! True to yourself, true to humanity, and true to your country. In each and every regard!...Be proud of us and try to hold us in proud and joyous memory. Everyone has to die sometime, and isn't it more beautiful, honorable, and brave to die young than to live a long life under shameful conditions? The letter must go out-Hanna Reitsch is taking it with her. She's flying out again! I embrace you in closest, warmest, motherly love! My beloved son, live for Germany!Yours, Mother By the time Margaret finished, her hands were shaking and her eyes were wet; she thought they were bleeding, but it was only a few tears. Magda's strange idea gripped her-this choosing of death over shame.

Margaret made herself ready and went to bed. For a long time she lay still under the covers. It was raining out and there came a tapping. The panes shook.

Margaret could not sleep. She began to read a second time, now with heavier eyes. She read about Magda Goebbels's high marks in Gymnasium; Gymnasium; about the details of her relations.h.i.+p with the Zionist Arlosoroff; about Magda's own efforts on behalf of the Zionist movement as a young woman. Regarding the Soviet inquest, she learned that Magda killed her children with the help of a doctor, that none of the children had struggled, except the oldest girl, who, according to the coroner's report, had bruises on her body and so apparently had been held down. No one was sure exactly what the poison was, as the Russian coroner had not been able to ascertain, but it left the tips of the children's fingers yellow. When Margaret read this, she was very quiet inside, her thoughts slowing and then stopping altogether, her head pulsing. about the details of her relations.h.i.+p with the Zionist Arlosoroff; about Magda's own efforts on behalf of the Zionist movement as a young woman. Regarding the Soviet inquest, she learned that Magda killed her children with the help of a doctor, that none of the children had struggled, except the oldest girl, who, according to the coroner's report, had bruises on her body and so apparently had been held down. No one was sure exactly what the poison was, as the Russian coroner had not been able to ascertain, but it left the tips of the children's fingers yellow. When Margaret read this, she was very quiet inside, her thoughts slowing and then stopping altogether, her head pulsing.

It was almost morning. Margaret got out of bed. She had a thick twist of energy in her chest.

She took a ges...o...b..ard out of the closet. She flipped through the biography of Magda, to its glossy centerfold pictures. She propped the book up on the desk. Over the ges...o...b..ard, her hands moved. She was surprised at herself, and frightened. Her fingers were of steel, and she applied so much pressure to the stick of charcoal that twice she broke it. Finally she drew with only a nub. She watched as Magda Goebbels's face bloomed in black lines. Magda Goebbels's face rose up, in the form of a glamour shot taken in Magda's youth. It was a young face, from the time before she had given birth to any of her six children with Goebbels.

The image of the face held Margaret and mesmerized her. It had traces of all the later forms of ugliness that came to dominate-the low, heavy brow bone; the snideness of the lines between the wing of the nose and outer corner of the lip; the thin mouth; the priggish tilt of the forehead. And yet-and here is where Margaret dragged her charcoal back and forth, craving the curve: something, something in the young face was still bleeding, still searching for metaphysics, and Margaret carefully traced every softness and hardness. She felt her disgust stretching, becoming a concentration that was almost tenderness.

Later she took out oils. She brought in color. One corner of the face became so vivid, it seemed ready to move. Margaret, possessed by some devil, produced a large, cold face, with silver-blond, salon-waved hair-a face glaring out at her with civilized eyes and callousness. Margaret brought in the squeezed-out bits of light and dark, setting the woman's hair to gleaming, the shadows of her nostrils to deepening. And finally, Magda Goebbels stared out at Margaret Taub, pert and quizzical.

As dawn broke, Margaret was in bed. The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was that she could feel the heat of a bird at the window, the slash of its wings against the gla.s.s-although it may have been nothing more than the rain grown violent.

SEVEN * * Privacy and Devotion Privacy and Devotion

The Grunewaldstra.s.se was an old West Berliner street, too far behind the front lines to have been rocked by the fall of the Wall or any other terror of the metropolis, so the street did not want for eyes, the kind of eyes that grow like lichen if a street knows no heavy winds.

Even an abbreviated inventory must include the eyes of the old lady from Armenia with bottle-black hair, who leaned permanently from the window of a half-height flat that was squeezed under the airy beletage beletage at Number 89. She folded her arms across the cobwebbed ledge and watched, especially at night. Although it was not unheard of that a pedestrian's eyes wandered up and met the old lady's by accident, something about the way her eyelids squared with her brow seemed to suggest a lack of involvement: "have no fear" they seemed to say-"we will not tell a soul if we see you hot-wire a 1986 Mercedes." Meanwhile, across the street, two glossy dogs were on standby behind the door at the Internet cafe. They had eyes as blue as forget-me-nots, with the same yellow center, and roused themselves for the man in a neon orange traffic cop's uniform, who pa.s.sed several times each day, bicycling up and down the Grunewaldstra.s.se without once touching the handlebars, yelling his head off. Everyone called him Loud Guy, or sometimes only The Loud One. at Number 89. She folded her arms across the cobwebbed ledge and watched, especially at night. Although it was not unheard of that a pedestrian's eyes wandered up and met the old lady's by accident, something about the way her eyelids squared with her brow seemed to suggest a lack of involvement: "have no fear" they seemed to say-"we will not tell a soul if we see you hot-wire a 1986 Mercedes." Meanwhile, across the street, two glossy dogs were on standby behind the door at the Internet cafe. They had eyes as blue as forget-me-nots, with the same yellow center, and roused themselves for the man in a neon orange traffic cop's uniform, who pa.s.sed several times each day, bicycling up and down the Grunewaldstra.s.se without once touching the handlebars, yelling his head off. Everyone called him Loud Guy, or sometimes only The Loud One.

So if Erich, the Hausmeister Hausmeister at Number 88, where Margaret Taub lived, was watching everyone and everything, who could blame him? He told himself it was a defensive stance-he lived in a neighborhood of ghouls. at Number 88, where Margaret Taub lived, was watching everyone and everything, who could blame him? He told himself it was a defensive stance-he lived in a neighborhood of ghouls.

Erich was the hero of his own story. In the courtyard of Margaret's building he lived, in a little ivy-covered house. He was unusually fleshless, his skull easily visible through the skin of his face, and already the night when Margaret returned from the Grunewald Forest, he had seen her while she was heaving clumps of clothing into the trash. And he had observed her long before that as well.

Erich was old. He seemed stern but in fact he was kindly; he was blindingly efficient, and he was knowledgeable about all matters literal and very few matters figurative. He was one of those men who think simply but are politically resolute, much like the plain-spoken Georg Elser, the carpenter who built cabinets and clocks, kept his own counsel, and in 1938 almost managed to a.s.sa.s.sinate Hitler singlehandedly.

Erich was an Autonomer Autonomer, an old one-he had been part of the '68 generation before there was a '68 generation to be a part of, one of those West Berliner anti-warriors who use the informal du du to one and all, even to plumbers and bank tellers, and the plumbers and bank tellers almost fall to the floor with a heart attack at the audacity if they are new to the quarter and he hasn't broken them in yet, although around here, almost everyone was broken in long ago. to one and all, even to plumbers and bank tellers, and the plumbers and bank tellers almost fall to the floor with a heart attack at the audacity if they are new to the quarter and he hasn't broken them in yet, although around here, almost everyone was broken in long ago.

Now it happens that Erich's story must be told as well, for through no fault of his own (almost no fault of his own, that is), he was destined to betray Margaret Taub.

The very same morning the city turned to flesh, Erich was wearing his black leather pants and matching vest, busying himself eagerly, delivering mail from the co-op management to the tenants. This was a practice he had thought up himself, officially so that the management could save the cost of postage, but he was also (although he would deny it if accused) using the opportunity to peek at the contents of each letter box-no real reason and it was certainly not mean-spirited, but he was interested. To see who had letters from the tax office, who had letters from collection agencies, and by Jove, if he saw a letter from abroad, perhaps from a lover! These were his great pleasures. Erich, who as a young man had been an anarchist, was, in his old age, something he would never have expected. His anarchism had taken a turn for the officious, his native kindness had twisted into rodent-like curiosity.

After the letters, he would check the trash. Here too, he had been active: Erich had introduced a new system of trash sorting which would save the building co-op forty euros each month. It meant the recycling was far stricter than in other living communities. A relatively low rate of compliance concerned him. Certain tenants insisted on throwing trash into improper receptacles, and thus he found himself required to sort through the trash thoroughly every week, reorganizing, rescuing treasures here and there. Today he pulled various letters and even a couple of books out of the slimy heat of the decomposing biodegradables, also a gla.s.s jar full of pickles! The letters, at least-he could easily see the names of the addressees. He would have a look at them, and then take the matter up with those individuals later.

He heard the main door to the apartment house open. Sunlight broke through from the carriage entryway. He poked forth his head. Ah, it was the American. He rustled through the trash again, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

The foreign girl was a difficult case. She always seemed to be sunken, her eyelids heavy. Erich had theories on this. In the past he had played with the idea that she slept fifteen hours a night. He knew when she came in (as he knew when everyone came in) and he knew when she went out (he could see these things from his garden house in the courtyard), and he also had a good view of when her lights were on and when they were off. Unless she was reading with a flashlight, there was no way around it: the girl slept extremely long hours. This was one of the benedictions of the winter for Erich, when the sun in Berlin rises so late and sets so early-he had an unusually profound insight into the sleeping habits of the building's tenants.

Still, he considered the possibility that the American, this Margaret, had found some way to fool him. It seemed like her, somehow. Maybe she was awake in some invisible corner of the flat. He had had certain outrageous experiences with her in the past that would support this. On one occasion when her lights were on on, Erich went and rang her bell in order to discuss with her the new bas.e.m.e.nt allotments, and she did not come to the door. Even after repeated ringing of the bell. He went back downstairs and looked up at her windows again and saw the lights were certainly on and a shadow was moving behind the curtains. He went up and rang the bell more forcefully. Still, she did not come to the door. He watched from his house in the courtyard as her bathroom window went from open to shut, and he fumed. Erich would not have minded helping the girl, back at the beginning. She was not unsympathetic. But she had been so morose toward the community for several years now, he had lost his goodwill.

After the incident with the door, Erich even considered not saying Guten Tag Guten Tag to her. If he wanted, he could certainly pull this off. When angered with another fellow who lived in the building, he had done exactly this-for twenty-five years. Even after repeated pleas from third parties to relent. But Erich believed in an apology. When, after twenty-six years and three months, the man did apologize, Erich had been more than willing to drink a beer with him. But he did like to hear that someone was sorry. It was worth the wait. to her. If he wanted, he could certainly pull this off. When angered with another fellow who lived in the building, he had done exactly this-for twenty-five years. Even after repeated pleas from third parties to relent. But Erich believed in an apology. When, after twenty-six years and three months, the man did apologize, Erich had been more than willing to drink a beer with him. But he did like to hear that someone was sorry. It was worth the wait.

His general aggravation with the girl had led him to do something he would normally never never do: he had read the contents of some of her discarded mail. He learned that she worked as a guide, gave historical walking tours, and although she considered herself an intellectual and read a great deal (or made a great deal of photocopies) of Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, and for a while took a close interest in Rosa Luxemburg, otherwise, for the most part, she was merely interested in the Third Reich. You know: who was guilty here, and who was guilty there; the Auschwitz trials; how many died here, how many died there. To judge by the papers that went into the recycling, she seemed to make all sorts of photocopies related to gossip about wh.o.r.es like Magda Goebbels, Geli Raubal, and Eva Braun, and he had once peeked through her door as she went in and seen a bookshelf with the complete diaries of Joseph Goebbels, with their distinctive spines. Erich thought it was a most unpleasant business-foreigners who sensationalize or even think they can call Germany to task. Where had she been when he had taken a stand against his own father, the old n.a.z.i who didn't like his (Erich's) leather pants (that was a laugh!), been partially disowned and had to make a new life for himself? Not even a glimmer in her do: he had read the contents of some of her discarded mail. He learned that she worked as a guide, gave historical walking tours, and although she considered herself an intellectual and read a great deal (or made a great deal of photocopies) of Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, and for a while took a close interest in Rosa Luxemburg, otherwise, for the most part, she was merely interested in the Third Reich. You know: who was guilty here, and who was guilty there; the Auschwitz trials; how many died here, how many died there. To judge by the papers that went into the recycling, she seemed to make all sorts of photocopies related to gossip about wh.o.r.es like Magda Goebbels, Geli Raubal, and Eva Braun, and he had once peeked through her door as she went in and seen a bookshelf with the complete diaries of Joseph Goebbels, with their distinctive spines. Erich thought it was a most unpleasant business-foreigners who sensationalize or even think they can call Germany to task. Where had she been when he had taken a stand against his own father, the old n.a.z.i who didn't like his (Erich's) leather pants (that was a laugh!), been partially disowned and had to make a new life for himself? Not even a glimmer in her grandfather's grandfather's eye, that's where. eye, that's where.

That Margaret Taub!-she was so sympathetic at first glance, such a soft-looking girl, almost clownish, as if she were ready to be touched, ready to feel pain over anything. After a while, though, you saw that she was soft enough, but so dreamy as to be almost criminally oblivious. All in all, Erich thought, the impression was of a poisonous cobra that believes itself, very genuinely, to be a small dog.

But Erich kept saying Guten Tag Guten Tag. The trouble was this: although she never seemed surprised at his presence in the courtyard, she never seemed to recognize him either, even after six years in the flat. Yes, she didn't seem to know him, and although she never withdrew that half-smile, she also never looked at him. Her eyes always found something to rest on off to the side. Perhaps it was for this reason that he continued to say h.e.l.lo: there would be no satisfaction in withholding his friendliness if she wouldn't notice him doing it.

Today he watched her. There was something more distressing about her as she locked up her bicycle, more wild-eyed. (Recall: this was the very day the city turned to flesh.) Erich said Guten Tag Guten Tag and Margaret gave a kind of cry, as though she had been about to scream but quickly suppressed the noise before it escaped. She turned her head and took a few swaying steps toward her stairwell, paused as if to regain confidence, and then darted away like an animal into its burrow. and Margaret gave a kind of cry, as though she had been about to scream but quickly suppressed the noise before it escaped. She turned her head and took a few swaying steps toward her stairwell, paused as if to regain confidence, and then darted away like an animal into its burrow.

Erich took off his gloves and went in his own ivy-covered house. He opened the file cabinet in the downstairs room that was black with weeks-old cigarette smoke. Without much trouble, he found the heavy notebook he was looking for, thick with several paper clips holding in loose pieces of paper.

It was a diary. He had found it once in the trash, along with a number of Margaret's other belongings. He had held on to it only as evidence, should it ever come to that: evidence of the outrage! Some Some people in this building, they threw reams of paper matter thoughtlessly together with the general tras.h.!.+ people in this building, they threw reams of paper matter thoughtlessly together with the general tras.h.!.+

(The irony-that Margaret with her obsessive privacy, her self-isolating ways wanton in their thoroughness, would be hounded by precisely such a busybody as this. She had thrown the journal in the general trash expressly because the paper receptacle was dry-looking and odorless-it seemed a comfortable place to dig through and steal from. The general trash, the foul-smelling option, appeared to be a roiling abyss that swallowed up far more conclusively. Little had she known!) Erich thought, now, that he would read the diary. The English would be a struggle. It was the English that had stopped him from perusing it before. There had been, however, reasons to learn English once, reasons having to do with international anarchism. And, Erich told himself consolingly, he liked a challenge.

And then it happened that Erich the Hausmeister Hausmeister read several long pa.s.sages Margaret Taub had once written. He became quite interested; he encountered a Margaret very different from the Margaret he knew. The American, it seemed, had not always been as she was now. read several long pa.s.sages Margaret Taub had once written. He became quite interested; he encountered a Margaret very different from the Margaret he knew. The American, it seemed, had not always been as she was now.

February 18, 1999(Ah!-Erich thought-an old diary then, from when she first moved in. Not a bad thing at all.)My dearest diary,Why do I write to you? Why do I write!!! I'm in love, you see. And I'm too proud to really talk to anybody about it (not that I know anyone here anyway) because honestly, I'm afraid I'm in love in the most terrible way-the way of taking oneself and one's situation too seriously, of the mind brus.h.i.+ng over the same sad fibers of conversation one had with the beloved with such loving repet.i.tion that if it were alcohol, I'd have pa.s.sed out long ago.It's Amadeus. I'm in love in the way I thought only thirteen-year-olds could be and I haven't felt anything close to it for such a long time and the terrible thing is that I don't think he loves me back. It's ridiculous, this kind of full-blown sweet torture, that the poets know so well and is so utterly ridiculous, where one vacillates between intense ecstasy and intense agony throughout the day, because one feels as if one were walking a tightrope where falling one way will mean waves of joy unknown to humankind and falling the other way will mean the darkest h.e.l.l. Your mood simply depends on which possibility you take most seriously at the time. Meanwhile, you attempt to stay on the tightrope, because that way at least you preserve a chance at the ultimate beauty. For instance, you would never attempt to force the beloved with an ultimatum even though that is obviously the quickest escape from this terrible state. It's the best idea nevertheless, because that way, if he says "no chance, not now, not ever," then you could at least start grieving and move on. But no, you don't have the courage. You would rather stay on the hideous tightrope.Amadeus is his beautiful name, and he was a good friend of my father's. I had the sense to look him up after I got to Berlin. Dad used to get dreamy when he talked about him, as though just because Amadeus was behind the Wall, he was dead. I think he talked that way because Amadeus couldn't travel and Dad felt guilty for being free.Here's what I know so far: Amadeus Vilnius is his full name (no middle) from Magdeburg in Brandenburg. His parents are both of Russian-German stock-ethnic Germans who lived for centuries in Russia and were driven out by Stalin during the war. He's forty-four, a professor of Russian history. He teaches mostly theory, speaks perfect Russian, also English and French. Needless to say, he's brilliant. He is not particularly good-looking, although he has china blue eyes with black lashes around them that are wonderful. Christina says that he looks and moves like a snail that has lost its sh.e.l.l, and that's entirely true. He keeps his shoulders pulled up for the most part, and he is all around slightly higher on one side. He smokes continually, Gauloises Legeres. He's about six feet tall, and his hair is graying rather severely, and he's very unhappy about that. He laughs frequently and amicably, puts people at ease the way he laughs. He has a wife. He's been married to her for two and a half years-her name is Asja and she's as pretty as a picture. I saw her at the library once. Very skinny, with bird-like bones and high color in her cheeks, dark hair that stands up, and lovely clothing-brown and auburn clothing that suits her perfectly, and matches him, actually. In other words, I can't compete with her physically. Beyond that, he has a girlfriend of a year and a half whom he was with last year when he was on sabbatical. She is nineteen years old (like me-hardly a coincidence?), Russian, from a musical Jewish family; she lives in Petersburg. She is starting to rebel, Amadeus says, and having a rough time of it. He took her virginity. He says that she lied to him and said she had had many experiences before. I don't know whether I believe him on that count. Supposedly, although her dependence on him has become a burden, he doesn't have the heart to call her in Petersburg and break it off, because of her precarious position trying to establish some kind of independence from her parents. Many of her childhood friends have stopped talking to her completely and her sister as well, because she quit the orchestra. But Amadeus says, being young, she has to believe in something, and she has made him her new G.o.d. So he thinks it would be devastating to her for him to forsake her. Asja (the pretty wife) does not know about Yulia (the Russian girl), or about me. Yulia knows about Asja, but not about me. Obviously I know about Asja and Yulia. Hopefully there are no others.So I am the idiot. And you know, I suspect that I am the least cherished of the three of us, and not only because I'm the newest addition.It's awful. You can see what an idiot I am. If it weren't for the all-consuming love I have for him, I would never in a million years stand for this kind of degradation. Oh Margaret, Margaret, Margaret! You will read this later and say to yourself, Look at what the loneliness did. I have always said in these pages that it is only the emotionally vulnerable who fall in love. And look at me. I should have taken precautions, knowing that these first months in Germany would be difficult. And I tried my best. I got plenty of books (well, maybe not enough truly stimulating books), and I traveled. I tried. I feel as though falling in love were catching a disease. Because I don't know how to finish this.Well, maybe I should help you understand what I do see in Amadeus. The above description makes him sound awful. It's this: he's lovely in every way. We recognized each other's intelligence almost immediately because it's the same type of intelligence (and believe me, not everyone recognizes my intelligence). What he is doing with all these women is the same thing I do with my multiple men, you know so well: trying to gain a secret power that won't have any risk, trying to put a wall up against disappointment-the dominating pleasure of the juggler, the clandestine thrill, the sense of quiet self-congratulation. And oh, the way he responds differently to me every time I talk to him is so suspenseful; the way his personality changes. His obvious vulnerability and cravenness, but also his endless sweetness. The way he loves his books. After only a very brief time I felt like I knew him extremely well, also the bad things about him-what trouble it would be if I were his beloved. But also what joy, to be with someone who is so similar, so familiar. We can't lie to each other because we are too much alike-we both lie about the same things and for the same reasons. For example, once during an intimate moment, when he was above me, I said, "If there's anyone who deserves a harem, it's you." And he said, "If there's anyone who deserves to be queen of my harem, it's you." We were lying through our teeth, both of us. He knew I thought he was rotten, and I knew he had a great ability to crown a new woman queen of his harem every single night. The momentary truce, though, that that was glorious. was glorious.Oh, this is horrible. If only I could quickly fall in love with someone else. I pray that it's a product of my loneliness and as soon as I start cla.s.ses at the university it will dissipate. (I've transferred to the history department!) Please let it be so. That much is clear at least, that even my endless joy at his nearness would not be if I could actually possess him, because he would never stay faithful to me, so it would be an endless torture. Oh please let this infatuation pa.s.s quickly.

Erich leafed further through the book. The entries were not regular, altogether just twenty or thirty pages for a three-year period. He skipped forward to 2001. through the book. The entries were not regular, altogether just twenty or thirty pages for a three-year period. He skipped forward to 2001.

June 20, 2001I must tell you, poor journal, about my extraordinary good fortune. I have no one else to tell! Of course it is regarding my happiness about Amadeus. And somehow, maybe-don't jinx me!-I'm actually having an effect on him and he seems to be starting to love me. (Oh G.o.d, let it be so!) When we were in bed and had both had something to drink, I said, "Well, if I can't be your girlfriend, can I at least be your Schatz Schatz?" and he hugged me and said, "How about my sister?" and I objected on the grounds that then we couldn't sleep together. So he said I could be his Schatz Schatz but that I already was his but that I already was his Schatz Schatz anyway, and that I was a anyway, and that I was a Tier Tier and he liked and he liked Tiere Tiere, and that he liked me even if I weren't a Tier Tier. Then the next day he dawdled at breakfast, and said he felt relieved that he wasn't having affairs with multiple women anymore and pulled me onto his lap and kissed me and told me he liked me and said I had a right to be jealous, that I could call him anytime I wanted because he didn't mind if I behaved as if he belonged to me, and that his wife still thought I was just an overzealous student and wasn't suspicious. Then the next day we went to bookstores together, and we had lunch and he talked further about the possibility of making a trip to Prague together, and he seemed slightly hurt when I acted like I would go somewhere alone in August instead. If you only knew Amadeus, you would see what progress this is.Let it go, let it go. If there is anything I've learned at this point in life it is not to ask for everything immediately and at once. Getting things from Life, and from people, is like trying to catch an animal: if you run after it, it will flee; if you are still, it will come to you. If only I can be completely still!

Erich flipped through the book. He came to a very short entry over six months later. the book. He came to a very short entry over six months later.

January 22, 2002I don't know what to think, but I am certain that for all the travails, the heartache, the intimate acquaintances.h.i.+p with Amadeus's worst qualities, how he and the pa.s.sion he arouses in me bring out my worst qualities, for all of that-I do want to try. I rejoice in him endlessly, when we're together the smell of him drives me crazy with pure love, just like in the very beginning. I've always known that Amadeus will bring me pain-and maybe it's for later years to examine why even the pain attracts me. And yet, I don't think it's to be condemned, my love for him, because in the end, I have won. My life is not so much a happy one as one that gets zapped full of bliss over and over. Amadeus is the zapper, whether I like it or not. I've gotten more from him than he has from me, although I would give him everything I have.

EIGHT * * Don Quixote of the SS Don Quixote of the SS

The days since the city's transformation-they pa.s.sed Margaret by. And although when she emerged from Number 88 the city was still burlesque and untamed, Margaret was jaded now. She was not surprised that the city appeared fleshy, and she walked past it all, half blind. Let the city's bosoms spill out over the top of its dress-what did she care!